Seeing as this is a D&D game and not a Gurps game, will actions and abilities in combat be limited by "casting time" (i.e. cooldowns) or will they be tied to a resource such as action points, energy, or mana? Will this resource be the same for all Nanos (mages) or will it depend on the types of abilities or cyphers being used, with activated abilities to generate effects in the world, reusable abilities that require no resources, or passive abilities that are always on (with and without resource loss), for example?

Torment is not a D&D or Gurps game, it's a Numenera game. In Numenera you can perform one action (attack, esotery, moving a short distance etc.) per turn. Esoteries ("spells") require spending a number of Intelligence points, which you have a limited number of (but which can be reqularly replenished). Of course, things may change a bit as inXile adapts the system from P&P RPG into a CRPG.

Yeah, every time you rest, you make a recovery roll and gain d6 + 1/tier points that you can distribute into your stat pools, though you can't go over your maximum. The first recovery roll of the day is a single action you can perform even in combat. The second takes ten minutes, the third one hour and the fourth 10 hours. This way you can recover up to 4d6 + 4/tier points during a single day.

For our Crises, we're looking at a system similar to Temple of Elemental Evil, where you get an attack action and a move action, or you can forego your attack for a double move.

As Caerdon stated, Intellect points are used for esoteries (and Might and Speed are used for other abilities as well). These stat points can be recovered by resting.

In Numenera tabletop, you get four kinds of rests, each requiring an increasing amount of time: 10 seconds (which you can do instead of your action in combat), 10 minutes, 1 hour, and 8 hours (sleeping). After the 8-hour rest, you get all of your other rests back.

In Torment, we're simplifying that a little bit, but we are keeping the basic idea. In particular, PCs will have a quick rest available during combat, and sleep will recover all your rest rolls (as well as allowing you to recover stats with any rest rolls you haven't used yet).

We're also using Sleep as a means of counting time. So when you Sleep, a day is assumed to have passed. This will have reactivity with certain events throughout each Zone. For example, two guys getting pissed off at each other in a bar might (if you don't do anything to push them one way or the other) have gotten into said fight while you were gone. So after you Sleep and return to the bar, there might be only one of the guys there with a black eye, or maybe both are gone and the barkeep tells you they got arrested for disturbing the peace, etc.

This way, we give the player more control over how fast time passes, and we can script much more interesting reactivity to time passing without worrying that the player is going to miss it all. (Some players might still miss some of it, and that's okay, but they won't miss it because they were taking their time exploring or because they left the game on for an hour while they went to eat dinner).

I like this system. It is similar to how I would run my Numenera sessions. Get players to use up their points through different challenges so they can rest for the day and continue adventure tomorrow with all the story changes that causes. And the control is always in player hands, or how many points they want to spend to achieve their goals

Adam Heine wrote:
We're also using Sleep as a means of counting time. So when you Sleep, a day is assumed to have passed. This will have reactivity with certain events throughout each Zone. For example, two guys getting pissed off at each other in a bar might (if you don't do anything to push them one way or the other) have gotten into said fight while you were gone. So after you Sleep and return to the bar, there might be only one of the guys there with a black eye, or maybe both are gone and the barkeep tells you they got arrested for disturbing the peace, etc.

This way, we give the player more control over how fast time passes, and we can script much more interesting reactivity to time passing without worrying that the player is going to miss it all. (Some players might still miss some of it, and that's okay, but they won't miss it because they were taking their time exploring or because they left the game on for an hour while they went to eat dinner).

Interesting, but how exactly will this be implemented?

Will the timer be running in the background regardless of what the players is doing, or (hopefully) will the timer for situations like the incipient bar fight only start once the players enters the bar and becomes aware of it?

I hope it's the latter, but even then, what seems like a great idea on paper can easily turn into a source of irritation. You obviously won't be able to do this for every quest - in fact, I'm betting you won't be able to do it for most quests - which means that someone completionist-minded (like me) will be left wondering whether they're about to miss out on being able to solve a quest every time an NPC has dialogue urging the PC to hurry or otherwise imply events might proceed on their own.
Especially since the original Torment and games like it essentially train you to explore as much as possible, safe in the knowledge that things will wait and give you all the time in the world to think about it.

Don't get me wrong - I'm perfectly fine with an RPG game that forces my PC to make occasional choices without having enough information - but much less so with one that forces me, the player, to make uninformed decisions because the rules of the game are not consistent - even though I realize this sort of thing is very hard to avoid in a CRPG that has any kind of reactivity to player actions...

Adam Heine wrote:For our Crises, we're looking at a system similar to Temple of Elemental Evil, where you get an attack action and a move action, or you can forego your attack for a double move.

As Caerdon stated, Intellect points are used for esoteries (and Might and Speed are used for other abilities as well). These stat points can be recovered by resting.

In Numenera tabletop, you get four kinds of rests, each requiring an increasing amount of time: 10 seconds (which you can do instead of your action in combat), 10 minutes, 1 hour, and 8 hours (sleeping). After the 8-hour rest, you get all of your other rests back.

In Torment, we're simplifying that a little bit, but we are keeping the basic idea. In particular, PCs will have a quick rest available during combat, and sleep will recover all your rest rolls (as well as allowing you to recover stats with any rest rolls you haven't used yet).

We're also using Sleep as a means of counting time. So when you Sleep, a day is assumed to have passed. This will have reactivity with certain events throughout each Zone. For example, two guys getting pissed off at each other in a bar might (if you don't do anything to push them one way or the other) have gotten into said fight while you were gone. So after you Sleep and return to the bar, there might be only one of the guys there with a black eye, or maybe both are gone and the barkeep tells you they got arrested for disturbing the peace, etc.

This way, we give the player more control over how fast time passes, and we can script much more interesting reactivity to time passing without worrying that the player is going to miss it all. (Some players might still miss some of it, and that's okay, but they won't miss it because they were taking their time exploring or because they left the game on for an hour while they went to eat dinner).

Will dieing and spending time in the castoff's labyrinth cause time to pass the same as sleeping?